Qinhuangdao

The city takes its name from Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor, who is said to have come to this coast on his last eastern tour in 210 BC and sent expeditions out to sea in search of the elixir of immortality; the Jieshi hills in Changli County, inland from the shore, are traditionally identified with the ritual behind the name, while the 'island' of the name was a small offshore hill by the harbour, joined to the mainland by dredged silt in the late Qing. Later rulers followed the same shore.

The place that made the area matter was the pass. In 1381 the Ming general Xu Da, sent to repair older passes, built Shanhaiguan where the mountains come within a few kilometres of the water, closing the narrow corridor between the North China Plain and Manchuria; the gate tower's inscription calls it the First Pass Under Heaven, and a spur of wall was run into the sea at Old Dragon Head. In 1644, with rebels holding Beijing, the Ming commander Wu Sangui opened the pass to the Manchus, and the Qing conquest of China followed.

Modern Qinhuangdao grew from two 19th-century developments. A harbour approved by the Qing court was built at the end of the 19th century to ship coal from the province's new mines, and the railway from Beijing to the north-east ran alongside it, while foreign engineers, missionaries and diplomats began building summer villas among the pines at Beidaihe. The port grew into the country's largest coal-shipping harbour, glassmaking became an early local industry, and after 1949 Beidaihe became the summer retreat of the national leadership as well as a holiday destination for workers. The three settlements were joined into one municipality, which now also serves as a university and container-port city.

Qinhuangdao's identity is split between the wall and the water. Shanhaiguan keeps the culture of a garrison town: temple fairs, the legend of Meng Jiangnü, whose search for her conscripted husband is one of China's four great folk tales, and a long local trade in guiding visitors along the ramparts. The wall is treated less as scenery than as the town's own history, and its origins as a Ming garrison remain part of local self-image.

Beidaihe's culture is that of the seaside holiday, a century old and still recognisably formal: photographs in front of the sea, matching sun hats, dawn swims and the ritual of watching the sunrise from the rocks. The resort's early foreign villas gave it an architectural style of verandas and pitched roofs that later buildings copied. Because it has been a place of retreat for governments and work units since the 1950s, parts of the seafront are institutional rather than commercial, with sanatoria and guesthouses behind garden walls.

The city is also one of China's best-known birdwatching centres, long known to birdwatchers for the spring and autumn passage along this coast. Birding is now part of local identity, alongside sea swimming clubs and the winter swimmers who go into the Bohai in January. Hebei's northern manners prevail: direct speech, heavy hospitality and toasts with baijiu or cold beer at a dinner table covered in shellfish.

About 3.1 million people live in the prefecture-level city, some two million of them in the urban districts, the rest spread between the resort districts and the inland counties. Population swings with the calendar: Beidaihe's permanent residents are few, and in summer the district's numbers multiply, while in February its streets are all but empty.

The port is the economic anchor. Qinhuangdao handles enormous volumes of coal brought by rail from Shanxi and Inner Mongolia for the power stations of the south and east, along with containers, oil and grain, and the docks, railways and shipping agencies employ a large share of the workforce. Glass, food processing, metal and vehicle parts industries sit behind the harbour, and tourism, wine and fruit growing occupy the coast and countryside. Yanshan University and a campus of Northeastern University give the city a substantial student population.

Daily rhythms are coastal. Fishing boats and the seasonal moratorium on fishing set the supply of the markets; retired residents walk the promenades at first light; and the summer season dominates half the year's income for families in Beidaihe and Nandaihe. Away from the sea, life in Haigang is that of an ordinary mid-sized Chinese city of wide streets and tower blocks. Winter wind, seasonal unemployment and pressure on the coastline from development are recurring local concerns.

Seafood from the shallow Bohai defines the city's cooking, and it is treated simply. Swimming crabs, mantis shrimp — known locally as pissed shrimp, pi pi xia — razor clams, sea snails, small squid and clams are steamed, boiled or stir-fried lightly, then dipped in vinegar with shredded ginger. Sea cucumber, farmed and gathered along this coast, appears braised with spring onion at more formal meals, and salted and dried fish are a winter staple.

Hebei's wheat cooking fills the rest of the table. Dumplings are eaten constantly, often filled with prawn or crab meat and leek; flatbreads called huoshao come plain or split and stuffed, including the donkey-meat version the province is known for; and cold sesame noodles, pickled vegetables and stewed pork with vermicelli are everyday dishes. The local preserved goods include shrimp paste and pickled sea snails.

Fruit and drink come from the countryside behind the shore. Changli's sandy slopes hold one of China's largest wine districts, most of its farmland under Cabernet Sauvignon, and the county's orchards supply pears, peaches and apples that turn up as juice and dried fruit. Beer is the summer accompaniment to a table of shellfish, baijiu the winter one, and stalls along the promenades sell grilled squid, roasted clams and candied hawthorn on sticks.